Kenneth Burke (1897-1993)

Amazing person, is THE modern rhetorician, invented modern rhetoric. Anticipated almost every major theory of 20th century, brilliant insights, just didn’t develop them all. Other people made their careers out of developing just one of his ideas
self-taught –dropped out of college.
Counterstatement argument against new criticism (read it “only one worth reading, but Attitudes Toward History also good book) – literature is unequivocally a form of persuasive discourse and is governed by rhetoric
great advocate of literature as use – in social context – not just appreciation – precursor of reader response
Burke’s Rhetoric as an analytical tool
Motive – Burke’s motive is a pun – reason why, motif, and something that moves along.
Substance – something that stands under the word. This is very medieval – distinguishing substance (what holds words up) from accidents (what you sense). The substance CANNOT be sensed by definition
For Burke words an have a substance, but this does not mean that it stands for an object
The goal of rhetoric is consubstantiality – the substance that is you is united with the audience. This is identification. consubstantiality (what we share with friends occupations activities beliefs allow identification, which stands in for persuasion) Rhetoric of Motives Like Vico’s sensus communis? To be co-substantial is to be an individual but part of a group by similar experience. The substance of acting together creates the cosubstantial experience. Science, then can be perverted by cosubstantiality, see Nazis. Factional divisions allow atrocity via otherness. This science needs/depends on rhetoric.
Identification is an imaginative act in which you assume someone else is standing in your shoes.
How do you use language and the ratios to create identification? This is Burke.
P1334 – primary and secondary rhetoric – usually ascribed to Kennedy, but it’s in Burke
P1335 – definition of rhetoric – rhetoric is addressed – no use by yourself. You NEED an addressee, even if it is invented.
P1336 – Magic and socialization – to live in a social condition you have to have rhetoric. Lanham took this in The Motives of Rhetoric
Socialization means learning some kind of rhetoric – even niceties – just to keep the communication lines open
p1338 never a time when we weren’t rhetorical. If you have language, you have rhetoric, language as symbolic means of inducing cooperation, see beyond the accidents of language
Language is persuasive and addressed
Burke’s practical use has been limited because it is hard to get everyone to agree on what he means…you have to spend a lot of time explaining why your interpretation of what Burke means is correct.
Terministic Screens – .Set of symbols that becomes a kind of screen or grid of intelligibility through which the world makes sense to us. We come to see the world as our symbol systems enable us to. Echoes Socrates—man as symbol using animal is unique. From Language as Symbolic Action come up again in Weaver as “god terms” – words that conceal the meaning and values behind them – words you don’t want to argue with. They are culturally relative, but every culture has them – a term that “screens out” from differences you might want to attend to
For Aristotle, it’s all about persuasion—ethos, logos, pathos. For Burke it’s about a new way to look at persuasion as identification, a broader process, not merely gaining audience assent—goes both ways, aud to speak and speak to aud, but still audience centered.
“Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is ‘meaning’ there is ‘persuasion’” “You persuade a man insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea identifying your ways with his”

The Pentad and Ratios

Act: what was or will be done.
Scene: generally thought of as where and when; context of act.
Agent: entity that could be construed as performing an act.
Agency: the methods or tools used to perform the act.
Purpose: goal of the act; the reason
Is a way of analyzing ANY rhetorical statement, whatsoever
There is no rule for which ratio you use – it’s up to you, depends on what you want to know
ratios describe relationships between elements of the pentad .An examination of all the ratios aids the critic in discovering which term in the pentad receives the greatest attention by the rhetor.
“Hitler’s Wars” is Burke’s classic/masterpiece in rhetorical analysis